McCAIN'S CLUELESS ON "THE SURGE"

With all of John McCain's whining about The Surge, I think it's important to remember that The Surge was not responsible for the decline in violence in Iraq. As I posted back in March the decline in violence is a product of four developments.

1. Moqtada al-Sadr's August 2007 cease-fire.

2. The Anbar Awakening, Sept. 2006 (Sunni's say no to Al Qaeda).

3. The physical separation of Shi'a and Sunnis right before The Surge.

4. The Low-Hanging Fruit of Death are gone (Shi'a & Sunnis move out of old "integrated" neighborhoods by August 2007).

To be sure, The Surge helped solidify the gains that would come from these developments. But this makes The Surge a "supporting" rather than determining factor for Iraq's decline in violence.

Still, John McCain seems to think that supporting The Surge is a sign of good judgment on his part (but curiously says little about his support for going into Iraq in the first place). But his worst gaffe yesterday was making the claim that The Surge made the Anbar Awakening possible. Huh? Doesn't McCain know how to read a calendar (we know he can't read a map)?

And foreign policy is supposed to be his strong point.

Fortunately MSNBC has the goods on McCain's time-line blunder.



So let's be clear here. Supporting The Surge does not make you a military genius, nor does it make you presidential.

It only means you're George Bush's lapdog.

- Mark